"Screen Time is over"
I like to be outdoor with my family, and my kids enjoy camping a lot. But to get to the beautiful places it often involves a long ride in the car. Like most kids, my kids love to play iPad or watch a movie in the car. But I don’t want them to play on the iPad the whole time when we have a 15h trip in front of us.
This is my solution for keeping kids happy in the car when I say “screen time is over"
Picture of a full set up
And this is how I did it. First, you need to figure out how you can use the space in your car between or around your kids best, that nothing flies around.
For my car I used a plastic container with 3 drawers and a wooden box on top. I tried different types of boxes, but they all broke somehow, and did not last long. The wooden box is strapped to both seats, that it stays in place.
I have a huge variety of different activities, and exchange them before we hit the road. Before a long road trip I usually have one surprise for each kid.
Books: Usually I go to the library one day before the road trip, that we have books with us the kids don't know yet. There are also good iBooks in the library or for free in the app store or iBook library. Here are my favorite:
Kids Versus - Sea Otter -
Music: When screen time is over, I still allow my kids to listen to music, don't forget headphones.
Coloring books:I don't want to bring a lot of coloring books, with the same character, I feel like they get easily tired of it. Here are my favorite coloring books: Usborne books
Activity binder: This binder has a lot of potential, and this it what I have in it:
- Plain paper, paper with lines, paper with cross lines.
- Print out coloring pages and activity sheets. Since their interest changes, it is easy to print out what they like the most before a trip.
- Road Trip Bingo Bingos
- Laminated sheets with Road (I will explain that later)
- Laminated sheets with People (I will explain that later)